When visiting a retail store that sells a wide variety of products, it becomes difficult for a consumer to determine what products/services are relevant to their desires or needs. In one example, it may be difficult to determine new products that are compatible with products and/or services that are currently owned by the consumer.
Large stores may offer maps to assist customers in finding the desired section of the premises in which they may find goods or services for which customers wish to shop. However, traditional maps are usually not interactive. For example, the map may be at a fixed location; and if so and if a customer needs to view the map again after having walked away from it, then the customer is required to walk back to the map and begin again. Even if portable, the map is usually paper, and the customer needs to manually compare their apparent position to a desire part of the premises and navigate through to the appropriate location.
Mobile devices and global positioning satellite (GPS) automated navigation have become quite common and popular, and such navigation may offer an alternative form of mapping for retail customers. GPS signals, however may be blocked by building structures; and as a result, GPS based navigation may be ineffective within the buildings of many enterprises. Whether traditional or automated on a mobile device, maps relating to retail premises generally are not well personalized to the products most likely to be of interest to an individual customer.
Even if a mapping service or guidance from store personnel helps to direct a customer to a particular area or display in the retail establishment where a product of interest may be located, the customer often still has to manually find the item of interest from among other similar items offered by the retail establishment. For example, if a customer is looking for an accessory (e.g. case) or consumable good (e.g. printer ink cartridge) for a particular type of electronic device, the map or other guidance may help to find the right area in the store; but once there, the customer must still identify the desired item that goes with the device that the customer already owns or possesses with them in the store.
As a result, most brick and mortar retailers have significant challenges in identifying consumers' desires and needs, and mapping those to the best available products and locations thereof in the store. Conventional brick and mortar retailers previously have often used a more personal approach of directly engaging the consumer to show the customer where to find products of interest and in some cases trying to map the customer's previously purchased products or accounts to related goods or services via a database. This approach, however, is tedious for the consumer and also relies on a store representative to provide the experience. These conventional systems do not provide a supplemental self-service application for customers who like to “browse” the store unassisted by a sales person.